As a general rule of thumb, menus are indefinite in HiMama. This means, that if you create a new menu, it should be reflective of a certain dietary restriction or age group not because of the season or month.
Menus should be continuous meaning every time a new "seasonal" menu is sent to you by your catering company or is created by your kitchen staff, you'll come back to the menu's page and continue from where you left off.
For example, as a center you may have a:
-Vegetarian Menu
-Infant Menu
-Menu
A "Vegetarian Menu", may feature vegetarian friendly meals that the educators use for children who are on this meal plan,
An "Infant Menu" may feature more infant friendly soft foods.
Lastly, your standard "Menu" will include all other meals in your center ie.) children who are not using a specialized meal plan.
Accessing the Menu
1. From your administrative account, click the user icon on the top right-hand side and select Menus & Calendars.
Creating a new Menu
1. Click Add New
2. Select the Type as Menu
3. Click Create
4. You will be brought to a calendar screen where you can enter in the menu details by clicking the + icon for specific days.
5. Click Add Meal and select the appropriate "Title" option and fill out the description. You can click "Add Meal" again to add other entries.
6. After completing all of the meal entries for that day, click "Save Now". You can then click "Next Day" to continue adding entries for the following day.
Granting Parents Access to a Menu
1. When creating a Menu, you can choose whether or not you'd like Menus to be visible to the parents using the check box next to Parent Visibility. *Note: Parents be able to see the menu from the app and a web browser.
2. You can edit the Parent Visibility for existing Menus by selecting the Settings option (gear icon) to the right of the Menu under the Menus and Calendars page.
Editing a Menu Entry
1. From your administrative account, click the user icon on the top right-hand side and select Menus & Calendars.
2. Click Open under Actions
3. Click into the specific meal you'd like to edit, and select the Edit option.
4. Edit the description accordingly and hit Save.
Using the Menu Copy Tool (Rotating/Repeating Menus)
1. From your administrative account, click the user icon on the top right-hand side and select Menus & Calendars.
2. Ensure all of the meals for your rotation have already been filled out before proceeding to use the Copy tool.
3, Click the Copy option to the right of the Menu.
4. Choose the Copy From: Start Date. This is the first day of already entered meals you would like to copy (should likely be a date in the past).
5. Choose the number of weeks to copy, starting from the date listed above.
6. Choose the Paste To: Start Date.
6. Click Submit.
Importing Meal Info When Adding a Food Update
1. Click the Add Updates (+ icon).
2. Select the Food update option.
3. Select the children to apply the meal to.
4. Select the meal type from the drop down list and then click Import from Menu.
5. Click Create Entry.
- Accessing the menu feature
- Creating a new menu
- Granting parents access to menus
- Adding & editing a menu entry
- Using the Menu Copy Tool (rotating/repeating menus)
- Importing meal info when adding a food update
Video length 3m 40s
Comments
10 comments
I have added the menu granted parent access, but the parents do not see it in their calendars along with the activities. Is this a bug or I am not doing something right? We usually send email with the weekly menu, but thought it would be useful to publish through HiMama instead. Thanks!
Hi The Beehive Daycare! Menus and activities are visible for parents in app and on a web browser. You can have the parents reach out to support@himama.com if they're not able to find them and our team will help them out!
Is there a way for the teachers to access (view) the menu? I can see the whole month’s menu in my administrative account, my parents can see it, but when I’m logged into my room (teacher) account I’m unable to get to it.
My educators often cover children to accommodate ratio or transition periods. In order to allow them to update the children who float into and out of their room or those children we are working on transitioning I have to have the box checked that they all have access to all rooms. If this box is checked then the Cook does not have access to inputting her menu unless she has full access to the administrator account. I can't be the only director that doesn't have the time to input menu's and would prefer if my cook has a way to do this that didn't mess up the educators access to all the children in the Centre.
It says up above that parents can only see if on the web and not in the app. Can you please verify because we have parents saying they can't see our menu.
Parent Visibility. *Note: Parents will only be able to see this if they login through a web browser.
Hi Heder's House,
Teachers can now see menus from their classroom calendar if the classroom accessibility is disabled
Hi Melfort Day Care Co-op Site 2,
Thank you for providing this feedback! I will pass this along to our product team!
Hi Happy Hall Preschool,
Parents can see the menus as long as the menus are set up to be visible to parents as well as the individual meal entries- there is a check box for each meal entered. I hope this helps! :)
If I have the menu set up on the calendar and it is made visible to the parents, do the staff also have add the menus each day or would this be a duplicate?
Hi Tracy Peterson!
Once a Menu has been created, staff can add it's meal information to a child's Daily Report by starting a Food entry from the Add Entry page. Enter the Meal type, and then select "Import from Menu". This will allow them to pull the information you have already created in your Menu.
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